


Genuine

by Tjerra14



Series: The Broken, The Whole [4]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Halamshiral (Dragon Age), Insomnia, One Shot, Orlesians again, POV Cullen Rutherford, Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition Quest - Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts, The Winter Palace (Dragon Age), and their beds, i should sleep, the cows are waiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:47:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22761922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tjerra14/pseuds/Tjerra14
Summary: At the Winter Palace, after the ball, Cullen struggles to sleep. To clear his head, he goes for a walk only to find the Inquisitor has had the same idea.
Relationships: Cullen Rutherford/Female Trevelyan, Female Inquisitor/Cullen Rutherford
Series: The Broken, The Whole [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1708717
Kudos: 42





	Genuine

**Author's Note:**

> I don't have much time to write at the moment, thanks to life, so other than adding small snippets, my work on other things is effectively paused. This, however, basically typed itself on two evenings, and apparently fluff is easier to write for me currently than death and destruction. That's a change.

Your hands, they’re on my face

Hmm, there would be no better place

London Grammar, _Interlude_

9:41 Dragon

Cullen couldn’t sleep.

Originally, he’d hoped the exhaustion would be enough for him to pass out, and for a short time, it was. The stuffed room didn’t allow for dreamless sleep, however, just like the nights before. Its walls inched closer in the darkness each time he startled up from yet another nightmare, and more than ever he wished to be back on the road, with only the thin fabric of his tent separating him from the sky, and sometimes not even that.

It didn’t help that he’d been assigned chambers that were, according to Josephine, only suitable to his status. They could’ve been spacious if not for an abundance of couches and armchairs that could host an entire platoon, or the junk the Orlesians considered decoration. He’d lost count of the times he’d knocked over a vase on his way to bed during these past few days, but the quiet cold glares of the servants told him it had been decidedly too many.

The bed was probably the worst part. He felt lost amidst the embroidered cushions, trapped by the soft mattress that seemed to pull him in as soon as he touched it, and the canopy looming overhead constantly threatened to smother him. Why some people needed so much fabric over their heads eluded him. Wasn’t a ceiling more than enough?

Right now, it was too much. What little air the window let in wasn’t nearly enough, and the walls seemed so close he could almost feel them brush against his skin. If he stayed here any longer, they’d crush him.

Outside, in the hallway, the weight on his chest was lifted. It always was. Nightly walks had become a routine to him over the years, and sometimes, when his thoughts threatened to spin out of control, he’d grab his sword to train in the greyness of the early morning hours. He felt better with a weapon in hand, and the exertion kept the dark corners of his mind at bay. Maybe it was a good idea now, too. His sword was back in his chambers, however, and he didn’t feel like returning to get it, so he kept on walking.

The corridors were mostly empty now, even the servants had gone to bed. Only guards dotted the halls, nodding at him when he passed them. Some of them were Inquisition soldiers, Cullen noticed, wordless reminders that the balance of power at the Orlesian court had shifted.

He almost stumbled upon a couple making out on a couch in the vestibule. Quietly slipping into another room, he hoped they’d been too preoccupied to notice him.

The door had led into the ballroom. His footsteps echoed loudly on the marble floor. It seemed larger now without the bustling life and colours of the ball. Shadows hung low between the pillars, obscuring the gilded reliefs he’d admired earlier this evening. Even though it seemed like a waste to put such intricate art on a ceiling where it hurt to look at them after a short time, he couldn’t deny there was a certain beauty to them. They’d certainly been more interesting than most of the company he spent the ball in.

Someone had lit the torches in the far part of the room, and judging by their flickering, forgotten to close the doors to one of the balconies. Or maybe they were still there.

They were.

Cullen found her on the eastern balcony, the one they’d danced on earlier, away from prying eyes that would judge his clumsiness, her laughter, the embrace they shared when the music stopped. She was leaning on the balustrade and looking out to the grey outline of the mountains. If she heard him approach, she didn’t show it.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, standing next to her.

Imira gave him an amused look. “Same as you, I’d say.”

“But here? The ballroom balcony?”

“Is that couple still there?”

He nodded.

“I’d originally intended to take a walk in the gardens, but well…” She grimaced and gestured in the direction of the vestibule. “This was the nearest door leading to some fresh air.”

For a while, they both silently watched the sky brighten—dark grey, then blue, until it lost all colour and the mountains vanished behind the fog that rose from the valleys below.

“Isn’t it weird,” Imira mused, “how little it took in the end? Josephine had made this out to be a harder fight than Haven. But there were no dragons here. No Corypheus. Just…secrets to be revealed at the right moment.”

“You know, I thought Josephine had a point. These people here, they can be dangerous in their own way, and I’d thought… I would’ve never thought you’d simply charm your way through court today.”

She sighed, looking down on the balustrade. “Only to get her off my back.”

“Really?” Cullen raised an eyebrow. “Some might say it looked like you enjoyed it.”

“I didn’t.”

There was a pause. Her fidgeting hands betrayed her doubts—she’d spent many War Room meetings pointing out how much she disliked nobility, and Orlesian nobility especially, how she hated their posturing, their snobbishness, the disingenuousness they breathed. It wasn’t her world, she’d argued, they weren’t her peers, despite her name, and they wouldn’t regard her as such, so maybe Josephine or Leliana or someone better versed in the game than her, anyone really, should do the negotiating? _I’ll just offend them_ , Imira had said. _You know I’m rather proficient at that._ Yet she was still the Inquisitor, and any offence her words could give would be smaller than her absence would cause.

They all had lost sleep over the ball. In the end, the evening had gone better than any of them could have expected. Not only were they still alive, they not only had not embarrassed themselves, no, they even had gained leverage. In a way, the Inquisition ruled Orlais now, and all thanks to her—her pleasantries, her smiles, her wits and, when it came to it, the quick strides of her blade and the lightning that hid beneath her skin. Cullen found it hard to imagine she’d not found at least a modicum of pleasure in it. Who didn’t enjoy power, albeit reluctantly?

“You’re a better liar than you think you are, then,” he said finally, and she scoffed.

“These nobles are so far up their own arses they’d take their own shit as a compliment as long as you make them believe it glitters.”

“And they believed you.” He couldn’t fault them, either. Imira had a way with words, if she wanted. And her smile…

“They’re arrogant fools,” she snorted, and, when he failed to comment, shook her head. “Oh, please. I haven’t fooled you too, have I?”

“That has nothing to do with your capabilities as a liar.”

“Did you really think any of it was genuine?”

Cullen knew which answer would smooth the frown that had sneaked into her expression. But it wouldn’t be an honest answer, not entirely at least, and if he owed her anything, it was honesty. The same one she met his questions with. The one she’d left in her chambers tonight.

Aside from their dance, he hadn’t spent much time with her this evening, instead being surrounded by what the Orlesians considered their finest, trying not to run away screaming as they showered him in marriage proposals and offers of a less binding, but equally intimate kind. Imira had seemed to be everywhere and nowhere at all. She’d been sneaking through the palace while maintaining her façade of being nothing more than a representative of another organisation struggling to tame Thedas’ chaos. Despite that, she’d come to his aid just as he thought he couldn’t bear it any longer and vanished again as soon as he’d had some time to breathe. Once, there was dried blood on her forehead, and he’d cleaned it off trying his best not to ask what had happened behind those richly decorated doors that hid the intrigues of the wealthy, and they soon had gathered a crowd gaping at them, speculating wildly about the nature of their relationship. She’d brushed her hand against his, then, holding it in place a bit longer than she needed to, and there it had been again, that crooked smile and that mischievous spark in her eyes, for once enjoying the attention focused on them. He’d followed her around for a bit after that, officially to keep her out of trouble, but some part of him just delighted in watching her entertaining the nobles. And stoking the fires of their rumours.

“You genuinely liked the dwarf lady that first congratulated you on the husband and then tried to talk you into her lyrium deal,” he remembered. “You didn’t correct her, either.”

A smile flashed across her face. “She was so enthusiastic about it. I didn’t want to tell her the Chantry would us rather not marry at all.”

There was a sadness he couldn’t quite place in her voice. He’d noticed it before, seen the same _longing_ in her eyes as her gaze drifted off into the distance whenever they had talked about her past, the time she’d spent in the Circle. The things she’d lost, or never had. Usually, she’d changed the topic, then, and he knew better than to press it now.

“On the other hand, you only pretended to be sympathetic to that Fereldan who wouldn’t shut up about using the templars and all available phylacteries to track down apostates.”

The sadness vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

“You’ve got to admit, he was obnoxious even for a fanatic.”

Cullen suspected that Fereldan had spent the past months under a rock, or at least a fort carved out of a rock, so removed nothing but the wind and the occasional starving messenger bird reached them. Suddenly faced with the Inquisitor herself, he’d jumped at what might’ve been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get into her good graces even though his choice of topic had been an odd one. At first, Cullen had been surprised at her politeness, even _interest_ as the Fereldan spewed equal parts saliva and hate towards mages at her, and the more Imira indulged him, the more his confusion grew and finally turned into anger. Even _he_ knew mages weren’t the monsters that backwater noble painted them to be, and with every nod, every acknowledgement, he felt the urge to defend them. Defend her, because she wasn’t going to do it herself.

She’d soon noticed, and squeezed his hand to keep him silent, and then he’d realised—this man could help them spread their influence into the farthest corners of the country, a goal Leliana had been pushing since the very beginning, _secure their loyalty so they won’t harbour the enemy_ , she’d said, and Imira’s smiles would win him over.

“So, what gave it away?” she asked.

“I…” Cullen bit his lower lip. He’d known. To him, she grew easier to read with each passing day, but that also meant he knew she wouldn’t accept a simple “I knew” as an answer. She’d ask for details; details he was reluctant to share. When he’d first noticed it, back when their growing friendship slowly closed the distance between them, he’d initially thought it to be his imagination. But the longer they saw each other, the closer they got, the clearer it became, and the day he felt it tingling against his face, his lips, he’d accepted the sensation as a part of her. It wasn’t always that clear as it had been that day, but there was no mistake: Electricity coursed through her veins and trickled onto the outside whenever she wasn’t looking.

“I don’t know how to put this,” he began. “But…you stop… _tingling_ when you lie.”

“I— _what_?” Bewilderment fought amusement on her face, and he felt the heat of embarrassment creeping up his cheeks.

“I think it’s your magic,” Cullen went on to explain, hoping she wouldn’t notice the redness on his face, but seeing her amusement gaining the upper hand he knew his hope was futile. “It feels like the air before a thunderstorm. It gets more intense when you’re relaxed.” _Or close_ , he added silently. _Very close._

“My,” she laughed, slightly nervous. “Maybe it’s for the better you’re no longer a templar. Being chased by you sounds like a frightening prospect if you can feel a mage’s presence.”

“No,” he shook his head. “Even with lyrium, I never experienced this before.” _Any of this, for that matter._ “It’s…just you.”

“Just me,” she echoed quietly, and as she stood there, looking at him with those bright blue eyes, a faint smile on her lips, the air between them vibrating with her magic, he couldn’t help but wonder what it would feel like underneath his hands, his caresses. Would her kisses hurt, would the touch of her fingers burn him, would her bare skin be too much for him to bear?

“Cullen?” His name was little more than a whisper, but it brought him back to the balcony, to safer thoughts. _Her smile._

“I…” She was so beautiful. He swallowed. “May I… May I kiss you?”

The hint of mockery Cullen found in her eyes told him she knew that hadn’t been his only intention. She didn’t seem to mind, however, instead taking his face into her hands, pulling him closer.

“Of course,” she breathed, and he let the tingling rush over him as the world became one with her lips.


End file.
